The Land of Nod Lyrics
Every day is spent at home among friends, but every night the speaker travels alone into the land of Nod, a country of dreams that cannot be remembered by day. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it as a bedtime poem.
The Land of Nod
From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.
All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do -
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.
The strangest things are these for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.
Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/the-land-of-nod/
- Type
- Poems for Children, Lullabies
- Written by
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Tune
- Read slowly and softly, a little slower with each verse
- Best for ages
- 3 to 8 years
What Does The Land of Nod Mean?
Four short verses make one tidy argument: the day belongs to home, and the night belongs to dreams. By day the speaker stays with friends. By night, "all by myself I have to go", beside the streams and up the mountainsides of dreams, where nobody tells the speaker what to do. Some of what is seen there is strange to eat and see, and some is frightening, but it all lasts only until morning.
The last verse is the honest one. Try as the speaker might, the way back cannot be found by day, and the curious music heard in the dream cannot be recalled plain and clear. Anyone who has woken and lost a dream knows this feeling.
Nod is a pun. A head nods when sleep comes, and Nod is also the name of a place in the Book of Genesis. Writers used "the land of Nod" as a joking name for sleep long before this poem, and Stevenson made it his title. Abroad here only means away from home.
The poem is useful with a child who dislikes the dark, because it admits that dreams can be odd and even frightening, then points out that morning always comes.
History and Origin
Stevenson published the poem in 1885. For his life and the book it belongs to, see The Land of Counterpane.
The poem is told in the first person, from the point of view of a child, as many poems in the book are. Its four verses cover day, night, dream and forgetting, and the plain words are the point: only "abroad" and "Nod" need explaining.
Learning Activities
- Dream map: draw the streams and mountainsides of dreams and add one strange thing to eat and one strange thing to see.
- Tell one dream: at breakfast, ask for one small thing from last night's dreams, and listen without correcting it.
- Dream music: hum a tune that might be the curious music, then try to hum it again tomorrow to see how hard it is to remember.
- Goodnight walk: read it as the last thing before the light goes off, one verse at a time.